Labour banging on about zero-hours contracts ...

[DaveB]

But then surely if the ZHC can earn you more than you can get on benefits it's not as bad as the media is trying to paint them?

One week it will, the next week it wont, but because of the way the benefits sytem works, if you get a good week on a ZHC it assumes that all weeks are like that and docks your benefits until you can show you are eligable again. All of which is done at the glacial pace of the benefits process meaning you can end up with no money at all if you get no work for a couple of weeks and the benfits system thinks you are entitled to nothing for the same period. You get the same problem the other way if you want to claim working tax credits, as you need to be able to show a minimum number of hours per week averaged out when you claim. If you can't do this then you loose out even though you have effectivly been working full time for some weeks.

[sal]

No. The ONS figures are 134,000 in 2006, 637,000 last year, most of the increase happening after 2008.


http://www.yourbritain.org.uk/upload...NAL_240414.pdf
http://www.yourbritain.org.uk/agenda...?download=true

And it's a report commissioned by Ed, using some data from ONS, i'm sure it's not biased at all...

Yet if you read carefully you might see that:

The research showed that employees on these contracts worked an average of 21 hours a week in 2013.

Analysis by the ONS (2014) estimates the numbers to be between 522,000 and 645,000. Some of the increase may be due to greater awareness among employees of what constitutes a zero-hours contract

Not quite the sensation eh?

[Euler]

It's all moot anyway, if the economy keeps growing and moves to full employment as seems to be the case.
Then ZHCs, which seem to be a creation of the Great Recession, which in it's turn was caused, in no small part by Labour hubris, and Gordon Brown not putting money aside for a rainy day because he had "abolished boom and bust" (really, a supposedly educated chancellor of the exchequer said that - I laughed then as I laugh now), will disappear as supply dries up.

[pjclarke]

Yes... but a point that has been identified is that there may well have been a great deal more ZHC back in ye olden days, it's just that people didn't realise that what they were doing was a ZHC, and so it wasn't reported as such. I think the phrase used was "There are more ZHC now, because we talk about ZHC more now".

True, and the ONS numbers are based on surveys rather than official returns so come with substantial error bars.

Finally, both measures from the ONS have wide confidence intervals. The number of people on zero hours contracts is likely to be between 630,000 and 765,000, while the number of contracts is likely to lie between 1.4 million and 2.2 million.

https://fullfact.org/factcheck/econo...ts_facts-41165

[unixman]

Zero hours contracts are good for some, but pretty evil for others. A ZHC basically keeps someone off the jobs market, at the beck and call of one "employer", who may or may not give them any work. It is like saying "I won't employ you, but sign this to say you won't look for another job, just in case I want to employ you at short notice". They want to exclusively book someone's time without paying for it, which is clearly immoral in my view. I am a Tory voter but Labour are right here (and nowhere else)

[pjclarke]

[QUOTE=sal;2076434Not quite the sensation eh?[/QUOTE]

Read on ...

Some surveys suggest that the ONS statistics may underestimate their prevalence across the UK. A 2013 survey of employers by the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) found that a fifth (19 per cent) of employers across the UK, and a quarter of all workplaces with 250 or more employees, employ at least one person on a zero-hours contract. The average proportion of zero-hours workers in these organisations was 16 per cent. Based on this data, the CIPD estimated that one million workers, or 4 per cent of the entire workforce, could be on zero-hours contracts.

The report was written by a Director of William Morrison. It seems to me a solid piece of work.

[Euler]

https://fullfact.org/factcheck/econo...ts_facts-41165

Well reading that, it doesn't really support Labour's case does it, thus proving my point in starting this thread?

Estimates seem to vary from 2.3% (ONS) to 4%(CIPD) and of those it seems quite a large percentage do NOT want more hours i.e. they are using the work for its flexibility.

I'm glad we got there in the end.

[sal]

15 hours a week - fine. Turn up each day for work not knowing how many hours there are, or having it fluctuate massively each week - not fine. It also makes claiming benefits much more complicated if you're in the overlap where you get some benefits but are working.

As already stated, they have been around but are much more widely used now. It's now pretty standard that if you go looking for work anywhere that uses shifts, you'll be on ZHC.

Is there any evidence to suggest that most of the ZHC are fluctuating massively each week? Of course we are very well aware of the extreme cases thanks to the sensation hungry media, but how many are actually like that?

As per the quote above even ONS warns that the sudden statistical increase might be due to the fact that many employers were not aware that the contracts they use are actually considered ZHC and might not represent the actual level if increase of ZHC

[pjclarke]

Zero hours contracts are good for some, but pretty evil for others. A ZHC basically keeps someone off the jobs market, at the beck and call of one "employer", who may or may not give them any work. It is like saying "I won't employ you, but sign this to say you won't look for another job, just in case I want to employ you at short notice". They want to exclusively book someone's time without paying for it, which is clearly immoral in my view. I am a Tory voter but Labour are right here (and nowhere else)

Even the Tories want to make an exclusivity clause illegal.

[sal]

Even the Tories want to make an exclusivity clause illegal.

I thought they already did